Lin Yutang
"I have always assumed that the end of living is the true enjoyment of it."
"What can be the end of human life except the enjoyment of it?"
Under the chapter subtitle MAN THE ONLY WORKING ANIMAL:
"...if a jungle beast were let loose in a city and gained some apprehension of what busy human life was all about,he would feel a good deal of skepticism and bewilderment about this human society."*
..."Even domestic pets don't have to work...a house dog...takes a nap in the morning...the aristocratic cat...just goes wherever it likes to go. So, then, we have this toiling humanity alone, caged and domesticated...forced by this civilization and society to work..."
"...I cannot believe that, with the coming of better material conditions of life [The Importance of Living was written in 1937], when diseases are eliminated, poverty is decreased and man's expectation of life is prolonged and food is plentiful, man will care to be as busy as he is today."
------
Such fun writing, and so insightful, but the life of leisure that Lin predicted did not come to pass and it's absence is widely regretted. Not here.
A full life is a life full of work. Lin is right that a purposeful life is purposeless, that wealth, status, fame, and power are not what life is about.
Life is about effort.** That is perfectly consistent with Taoism, that there is no destination only journey, that the journey is the destination. But it also goes beyond Taoism's endorsement of a life of leisure, of a species of "loafers," in Lin's word.
We must try because we can.
The brain is not all that there is to mankind, as Lin says, but it is a part of us. Most obviously, our brain allows--forces--us to realize one, that there are many aspects of the world as we find it that are...harsh, and two, that we can change the world as no other species can and sometimes make it better.
Our realization that we can effect change also makes us as normative beings. When we choose one course of conduct we are also not choosing others. We are making value judgments. Later, we can reflect on those choices and the values that informed them, and make the same or different choices next time around.
Most to the point of this disagreement with Lin is the elevation of man's spirit that comes from effort alone. Why climb Everest? "Because it is there," famously answered George Mallory. That answer stuck with people because it went to Anglo-American man's Tao of work: Effort.
* "Body and Soul," Public Occurrences, 10-18-02.
** "The Importance of Being Earnest," Publocc, 10-6-02.
-Benjamin Harris
"I have always assumed that the end of living is the true enjoyment of it."
"What can be the end of human life except the enjoyment of it?"
Under the chapter subtitle MAN THE ONLY WORKING ANIMAL:
"...if a jungle beast were let loose in a city and gained some apprehension of what busy human life was all about,he would feel a good deal of skepticism and bewilderment about this human society."*
..."Even domestic pets don't have to work...a house dog...takes a nap in the morning...the aristocratic cat...just goes wherever it likes to go. So, then, we have this toiling humanity alone, caged and domesticated...forced by this civilization and society to work..."
"...I cannot believe that, with the coming of better material conditions of life [The Importance of Living was written in 1937], when diseases are eliminated, poverty is decreased and man's expectation of life is prolonged and food is plentiful, man will care to be as busy as he is today."
------
Such fun writing, and so insightful, but the life of leisure that Lin predicted did not come to pass and it's absence is widely regretted. Not here.
A full life is a life full of work. Lin is right that a purposeful life is purposeless, that wealth, status, fame, and power are not what life is about.
Life is about effort.** That is perfectly consistent with Taoism, that there is no destination only journey, that the journey is the destination. But it also goes beyond Taoism's endorsement of a life of leisure, of a species of "loafers," in Lin's word.
We must try because we can.
The brain is not all that there is to mankind, as Lin says, but it is a part of us. Most obviously, our brain allows--forces--us to realize one, that there are many aspects of the world as we find it that are...harsh, and two, that we can change the world as no other species can and sometimes make it better.
Our realization that we can effect change also makes us as normative beings. When we choose one course of conduct we are also not choosing others. We are making value judgments. Later, we can reflect on those choices and the values that informed them, and make the same or different choices next time around.
Most to the point of this disagreement with Lin is the elevation of man's spirit that comes from effort alone. Why climb Everest? "Because it is there," famously answered George Mallory. That answer stuck with people because it went to Anglo-American man's Tao of work: Effort.
* "Body and Soul," Public Occurrences, 10-18-02.
** "The Importance of Being Earnest," Publocc, 10-6-02.
-Benjamin Harris
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